Don€™t Blame Christians For John Kerry€™s Defeat
Want to blame someone for John Kerry€™s defeat? Writer John MacArthur thinks religion is to blame. In an article called €œReligion’s Kidnapping of the Campaign€ published by The Providence Journal he argues that secularism is under assault by fanatical Christians who are trying to turn America into a theocracy.
MacArthur asserts that the founding principle of separation of church and state argues that politicians should be devoid of personal religious expression. His hero in this battle is, of course, Thomas Jefferson. But MacArthur shows an incredible lack of historical perspective. Jefferson argued €“ rightly €“ against the establishment of a state religion but the nation€™s third president was himself a religious man. Garry Wills writes in his 1989 book Under God:
Jefferson€™s words are put to many uses in debate over the relationship of the church to state in America. We know more about his personal views on religion than we know about any other person€™s at the origin of our state. But our knowledge is drawn from sources denied to his contemporaries, who speculated widely about his €œatheism€ or made unfounded charges about his hostility to organized religion of all kinds. Echoes of those charges haunted his reputation, even to this day.
George W. Bush, from my standpoint, misused religion during this campaign (and during his first term) by arguing for a theology of empire in which America€™s military power is an instrument of God€™s will. MacArthur is incensed that John Kerry didn€™t completely disassociate himself from faith in the campaign.
€John Kerry, the quasi-secular Catholic, makes sure he’s photographed with the proper forehead smudge on Ash Wednesday. Threatened by Catholic priests furious with his defense of abortion rights, he tries to outdo Bush in his declarations of religious faith.
No surprise that in the final presidential “debate,” Bush again stated with jaw-dropping arrogance that “God wants everybody to be free” and “that’s been part of my foreign policy. In Afghanistan, I believe that the freedom there is a gift from the Almighty.”
Kerry, instead of simply affirming Article VI and the First Amendment, upped the ante: “Everything is a gift from the Almighty”
More recently, in a speech in Florida, the Democratic candidate born into the citadel of Puritanism employed the word “faith” 11 times, while genuflecting to the enemies of liberty: those “great preachers and educators who taught the founders of our nation to believe that we could create a great and shining City on a Hill here in America.”
This is a religious qualification for public servants desired by Puritans (ancient and modern) and banned by the Constitution — yet now, in effect, established. The vote today may well turn on the perception of each candidate’s religious faith.
Kerry€™s only mistake in talking about his religious faith was not doing it soon enough (see related post). Faith in God and in a progressive form of Catholicism clearly help guide Kerry€™s decision making process. Voters want to know what makes a candidate tick. When you attempt to hide who you are at the core people can feel that and wonder where your values develop. No one had to ever guess at Bush€™s core (flawed as it is). He would have felt more €œreal€ to voters if he had been more open about who he was.
Discussing your faith is a far cry from embracing theocracy.
America€™s labor movement, women€™s suffrage movement, and civil rights movement all had strong support from religious leaders in America. Our government doesn€™t need a state religion but our people have benefited from the actions of those who act out of their faith in God.
This election saw more efforts by progressive Christians to engage in the political process than at anytime in over a generation. Not all Christians are Bush Christians. It was good for America that hundreds of thousands of progressive Christians organized in churches and ecumenical groups to lift up issues of poverty, war & peace, and racial justice. My only wish is that we had been better organized. The Kerry campaign missed several opportunities to partner with the faith community in a meaningful way. Jim Wallis wrote today that:
Religion was a big factor in this election, and “moral values” were named as a key issue for voters in the exit polls. On the Republican side, George W. Bush talked comfortably and frequently about his personal faith and ran on what his conservative religious base called the “moral issues.” On the Democratic side, Senator John Kerry invoked the New Testament story of the Good Samaritan, talked about the importance of loving our neighbors, and said that faith without works is dead - but only began talking that way at the very end of his campaign€.
It is now key to remember that our vision - a progressive and prophetic vision of faith and politics - was not running in this election. John Kerry was, and he lost. Kerry did not strongly champion the poor as a religious issue and “moral value,” or make the war in Iraq a clearly religious matter. In his debates with George Bush, Kerry should have challenged the war in Iraq as an unjust war, as many religious leaders did - including Evangelicals and Catholics. And John Kerry certainly did not advocate a consistent ethic of human life as we do - opposing all the ways that life is threatened in our violent world.
We didn’t lose the election, John Kerry did, and the ways in which both his vision and the Democratic Party’s are morally and politically incomplete should continue to be taken up by progressive people of faith.
MacArthur and the other secular liberals out there ought to welcome those of us who are progressive Christians to the table. We need to continue building bridges to progressive groups that are not expressly religious. Unfortunately, it was often the case that secular Democrats wanted nothing to do with religion in this campaign. MacArthur even mocked Kerry’s faith in his article. Mocking religious people and excluding them from the progressive coalition was one of several mistakes that helped contribute to Kerry’s defeat. Maybe we’ll all do a better job in four years.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:00 pm
Of course christians are to blame. Dont’ be stupid.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:29 pm
I do not believe any of this. I do not believe it was Kerry’s fault or the fault of any of the people who worked so hard to elect him. And, I do not think it is the fault of the voters. I believe that it is the fault of a well-linked group who bought, built, and programmed the Diebold machines, insisted on their use and that they leave no paper trail, which machines were programmed to turn a certain percentage of the vote to Bu$hCo. We will never do “better” in any upcoming elections, never, unless we get rid of those machines. How? Have not a clue. But, it must happen.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:56 pm
“Mocking religious people and excluding them from the progressive coalition was one of several mistakes that helped contribute to Kerry€™s defeat.”
I completely agree. Despite the fact that some of the people (not Chuck Currie) waving this flag are part of the damn problem, I completely agree.
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:06 pm
God believes in the truth so his religion can not be blamed. Hower, the religious leaders of this country need to examine themselve. For they have led the flocks to believe in a man who does not live up to his duty to tell the truth to the American people. What would Jesus say?
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:02 pm
As one who lived in the time of the Civil Rights movements, of the Berrigan brothers, of Liberation Theology in Central America as priests and nuns were gunned down, my satire is usually not directed at all people of faith. Most of the time, I mock selective literalists, who make themselves arbiters of certain passages in their holy scriptures, then beat everyone over the head that doesn’t consent to their interpretations.
In short, fundamentalists who use the Bible or Quran or whatever, to divide,to injure and to condemn unbelievers to Hell for not believing in their ‘rapture’, their 72 virgins awaiting, their desire to surrender life to their bloody Apocalyptic visions for Jerusalem…. which is only sacred to me for the life it contains today - like everywhere else - and not for the deaths that occurred yesterday.
Sure, once in awhile, I poke fun at ‘em all, literalist or not, civil or hostile. I poke fun at myself, too, without believing I’m a rotten SOB in the process. Humor is designed to offend, to a degree, and designed to puncture balloons and grill sacred cows.
If some wish to make me a heretic and boil me alive for my words, have at it. But their missing the point.
I don’t fault Kerry a bit for running a deficient campaign. I think he did the best that can be done under the circumstances. There’s a difference between one speaking a bit about his faith and having a life that exemplifies that faith, and one who yaps about it constantly but lacks much evidence of living it.
The GOP has made religion a litmus test - not all faith, just THEIR so-called faith, which is projected as a bullying, intolerant thing. In doing so, they win elections while driving others away from their religions. I seem to recall warnings in The Book about the punishment for turning people away from God. Do you think that worries them in the least? No way; proof how transparently false their real motives are.
I don’t blame people of faith for election losses. But people of hypocrisy, division and death who hide their bigotry behind their holy hymnals will be people I mock relentlessly.
At the same time, people whose lives demonstrate a commitment to a loving faith - as Christ, among others, taught it, gain my respect and kinship. I’m not happy that my words offend them, too. But unlike those Civil Rights days, progressive people of faith are just not visible enough on important matters. Turn off your computers and watch the lens of the media as 3/4s of the country does and the progressives of faith are nearly invisible, compared to the ones afoot 40 years ago.
I don’t ‘blame’ them for anything. But I sure wouldn’t mind seeing more of them marching against the slaughter of Iraqis as a moral matter, on a weekly basis.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:49 am
I blame all the fuckwit religious bigots who are my neighbors. They’re bigots and they use Jesus as an excuse. They can quote whatever bible verse they want, they’ve been fucking Jesus up the ass for their own causes for years and then have the audacity to say that THEY are being discriminated against. Fuck them. Send their kids off to die in GW’s wars. Let their blood be spilled.
November 4th, 2004 at 2:37 am
Dynamics of Deception
Motivation, power and money mixed with ‘moral values’. It’s all there. This is the root of it and unless we understand and expose it we will never have our America back. They are very skilled at getting a message out, but the message of morality is …
November 4th, 2004 at 7:54 am
You’ve drunk the Jefferson Kool-Aid, I’m afraid. He was not a Christian, but a Deist.
The first heresy of Chritians, for which they killed many people, was called Arianism. It said God was One, and not Three (the Trinity). Jefferson believed God was one.
Modern people simply can’t understand how absolutely necessary it was to attend a chi-chi Church to get ahead.
Jefferson wrote to John Adams, “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
November 4th, 2004 at 9:43 am
Bienvenue to the methods of the Dark Side, Chuck. An objective reader would not consider MacArthur to have mocked Kerry’s religion in that article, only to disagree with his public expression of it and his cloying effort to top Bush’s declarations. However, you are wisely following the approach described by Victor Hugo in Quatre-vingt-treize:
- Est-il vrai qu’il se soit caché fond de cale ?
- Non. Mais il faut le dire tout de même.
November 4th, 2004 at 7:14 pm
The original Christians knew that faith must never be permitted to become fashionable, for when it does there is an incentive to insincerity.
November 4th, 2004 at 10:31 pm
My religeous sister and brother in law and 42% of the weekly church goers voted for Kerry. If it wasn’t for Kerry’s Vietnam bagage we would have a democratic presedent. Bill Richardson 08